It was an eye opener. The farther he drove the more alone he felt. He hit Main, took a right and while he drove along the deserted street he noted how many of the stores were closed. They should have been open for another half hour. As he started to drive by his antique store, he saw the ‘Closed’ sign hanging on the door and slowed down. He was as guilty as anyone. Finding Main Street deserted shouldn’t have been a surprise for him. He pushed back down on the gas and hung a U-turn at Broadway as he shot a quick glance over to the bar he and Stan frequented. It too was closed.
As he swung the truck around, the high altitude images of the dead bodies in Aquismon flashed through his mind and shot his pulse through the roof. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine the same thing happening in Madison. The Chevy’s right front tire jumped the curb as the truth hit him like a brick wall. “They’re lying.” He pictured Becky standing in the bedroom and staring at the pile of clothes. Instead of veering back onto the street, he bit down and accelerated down the road with the right side of his truck cocked up on the sidewalk. “It’s not contained!” He hunched over the wheel and screamed, “Goddamn it!” as he aimed the truck at the newspaper stand on the corner. But as he pressed his foot to the floor, an image flashed through his mind that he couldn’t explain. He saw himself—staring out a window at the distant glow of a town burning in the dark of night. Before he could question it, the right side of the bumper caught the newspaper machine and sent it flying into the air.
The truck bounced as all four tires landed on the asphalt and he found himself shooting through the intersection. It took another block before he was able to let the tension go and yank his foot off the gas. After straightening it out, he eased his grip on the steering wheel and let the truck coast. Becky couldn’t see him like this. He had to calm down. After a few deep breaths, his heart rate started to return to normal. Two blocks later he put his foot back on the accelerator and started driving again.
He kept his speed under the limit as he drove back past Michigan. But then he purposely drove through the stoplight at 421 while it was red. Somebody had to still be around. If you ever wanted a cop in Madison, the one place you could be sure and find one was at that intersection. The police loved to sit along the adjacent curb and nab the ignorant driver who didn’t realize the speed limit suddenly dropped down from 45 to 30. Except this time as he stared in his rear view mirror and prepared to brake, he realized that today was going to be the day that speed limit offenders would go unnoticed. Downtown was dead. He hung another U-turn and headed back for Michigan.
He glanced down the side streets as he maneuvered the truck up the winding road. The first few streets he didn’t see anyone outside. But then halfway up, he caught sight of a man loading up his car with boxes and sleeping bags while his family waited impatiently in the grass.
He was still looking down the side-street when a Grand Am came out of nowhere and almost hit him head-on. Chuck jerked the wheel and hit the brakes as the car sped past him on the left. On any other day the Grand Am would have gotten a rise out of him, but with what seemed to be happening, the event passed right through him without any lingering thought. He glanced in the rear view mirror to see if any other cars were coming before giving the Chevy some gas and resuming his steady rise up the hill.
A few blocks before his street, he passed an older couple lifting suit cases into the trunk of their Lincoln. But what really made the bile rise up in his throat were the cheap paper-masks they had strapped over their mouths. “No…no…”
His skin was beginning to crawl as he turned on his street and popped up onto their cement drive. He got out, stood in the twilight and listened to the silence. Most of his neighbors appeared to be home. Their lights were on and he could see movement around the windows through the drapes. He could even see a couple of televisions on. But he couldn’t hear anything. As the sound of a dog barking several blocks away broke the silence, he thought of the old couple wearing the masks. He looked across the street at the activity of his neighbors behind the drapes and realized that they were probably throwing blankets down at the foot of the exterior doors and taping up crevices around the windows—trying to seal off any openings where outside air could seep through.
With the realization of how unprepared they were gnawing at his stomach, he ran inside and called out for Becky.
Chapter 9
Chuck sat Becky down on the sofa shortly after midnight and showed her how to handle a rifle. Ten minutes later he jumped in his truck and headed out to search for supplies. He took a right on SR 62, sped past the shopping center with the Marsh grocery store, swung into Wal-Mart parking lot and locked up the brakes along the curb right in front of the store. Under normal circumstances, Wal-Mart was open twenty-four hours a day—but not tonight. The lot was empty, the doors were closed and the lights were off. Just as well. From what Stan told him, there were too many fights over too little food.
He grabbed the tire iron from behind the seat as he got out. With a long forceful stride, he walked over to the plate glass windows at the entrance to the store. He reared the iron back over his head and was about to strike the glass when he saw the reflection of the Marsh sign in the window. Disbelief spread across his face as he turned around and looked at the sign. Habit was hard to break. He had driven right past a real grocery store without even thinking about it. But it probably didn’t matter which one he hit first. The chance of finding much food at either was slim at best.
He turned back around, raised an arm to protect his face, and struck the glass with the tire iron. The first attempt ended in surprise as the iron bounced back without cracking the glass. The second was a different story. The glass fractured and set off the store’s alarm. The rapid, high-pitch metal clang of the bell had no effect on his effort. Chuck continued to break out the glass until he had an opening big enough to walk through.
The store would have been pitch-black inside if it weren’t for the emergency lighting. It was dim, but there was enough light for him to see where he was going. He grabbed a shopping cart and started making his way down each and every aisle. The place was in a shambles. This was a small town, free of big city crime, but as he wheeled down the cluttered aisles, the store looked like it had been looted in a riot.
Nearly everything that anyone could fathom a use for had already been taken. But he did lay his hands on a few cases of baby food. And surprisingly, it didn’t look like anyone even bothered with the candy displays at the checkouts. He threw what he found into the cart. Twenty minutes later he barely noticed the alarm still ringing as he calmly pushed the cart out through the broken glass and dumped everything onto the passenger floorboard of his truck.
Marsh was next. After breaking the glass and finding little inside, he searched the dumpsters out back and found two cases of Hormel chili. The dates were still good—probably hidden there by one of the employees who planned on retrieving the bounty sometime in the morning.
Finally, a little over an hour after he started, he headed back down 62 with the passenger floorboard full of supplies. As Michigan Road came into view, he saw a semi-truck and two government-issued Ford LTD’s idling with their lights on under the canopy at the corner gas station.
He killed the lights and eased the Chevy to a stop along the gravel shoulder. If they wanted him, they would have to come and get him. He wasn’t going to drive over and turn himself in. They know I’m here, they had to see me pull off. What are they waiting for? The tension peaked when a county patrol car pulled up next to the two Fords, only to fall off moments later when everyone got out and shook hands. Chuck was too far away to hear anything and it was too dark for him to read what was on the side of the semi, but he could see the men gesturing like they were discussing something. Whatever it was, the deputy felt it was more important than responding to the security alarms still ringing from his smash and grab.
The deputy walked a few feet out into the intersection and pointed down 62 in the opposite direction before walking b
ack and joining the other men. A moment later after the deputy shook hands with one of the Feds, they all got back into their cars. It looked like the Fed who shook the deputy’s hand talked to someone on the radio before flashing his lights at the patrol car. The patrol car pulled out onto 62 where it paused in wait as the two Fords and the semi-truck pulled out of the station. When the semi cleared the canopy, the moon provided enough light for Chuck to see that it wasn’t any normal commercial semi. The side of it read, ‘NDMS—TM unit C61’. From what was going on and what he had seen on television, he was pretty sure that the first four letters stood for National Disaster Medical System. But he had no idea what the TM stood for.
He waited for the taillights of the convoy to blend into the night before he turned his lights back on and headed home. A few minutes later he was tapping the front door with his foot while balancing a heavy load of Hormel Chili in his arms.
“Chuck?” Becky was doing as he asked—staying away from the drapes and not letting anyone know that she was there by herself.
“Yeah, hurry let me in.” He was happy to see her still holding the rifle when she opened the door. He looked her in the eyes, and for a second a feeling he couldn’t explain came over him. At first it was a jumble of emotions: fear, love, anger, and even regret, that somehow, inexplicably, culminated in the most satisfying sense of belonging that he had felt in quite some time. He caressed her arm and asked, “Anything new on CNN?”
For a second her eyes locked on his strength, then she shook it off, blinked once, and looked over at the television before turning back and blurting out, “Oh yeah! There’s been a survivor!”
He dumped the cans of chili on the floor, locked the front door, and joined her on the sofa. Becky slid her hand across the cushion to him. He saw it and immediately wove his fingers between hers and took her hand. Instead of looking at the broadcast, he looked into her eyes. He knew every feature and expression of her face. He remembered the story she told him on their second date about how she got the scar under her right cheek bone. He could describe every hair style she had ever tried. And he remembered the first time those lips whispered that she loved him. Most of all, he knew the expression in her eyes. He would never forget the joy he saw when he proposed, or the pain they shared when the doctor told them that they could never have children. When he looked into them now—he saw hope. After a lingering gaze, he asked, “Where’d they find the survivor?”
She responded with a whisper. “Suburb just outside Atlanta.”
He reared back. “Atlanta?”
Becky confirmed it with a straightforward yes, a simple response with grave implications. The outbreak was spreading. She squeezed his hand and pointed to the television. “Here it is.”
They both watched an attractive, professional looking lady behind the CNN anchor desk announce, “Once again it has been confirmed that at least one individual has survived the illness associated with the outbreak. We’re taking you live to Dr. Brett Williams, the head physician of the NDMS response team in Atlanta, Georgia.”
The station signal flickered once before a room full of murmuring reporters, doctors and military personnel filled the screen. The room suddenly grew quiet as an elderly man with a neatly trimmed full beard and mustache took the podium without any introduction. He retrieved a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his lab coat, put them on, and began to read straight from his notes. “We have confirmed a survivor to the outbreak. Her name is being withheld until any extended family can be contacted through proper channels. We can say that she survives her immediate family, but I can’t give you any more details than that. Her condition is stable, but the attending physician has stated that she will not be in any condition to provide any insight to her survival for at least several days.” He looked up from his notes, took his glasses off, and slid them back in his pocket. “I’ll take orderly questions.”
From somewhere in the crowd, “Dr. Williams, do you have any theories about why she survived?”
“We’ve concluded that the outbreak is caused by the introduction of a spirochete shaped, previously undocumented bacteria. It infects the upper respiratory tract and after a short incubation period, it causes nitrates in the body to bind with the host hemoglobin. We have generalized that the incubation period is roughly four weeks. As you know, this affliction quickly triggers a rapid progression of events that ultimately leads to death. So far our efforts to thwart the progression have been unsuccessful. The pathogen itself is highly resistant to natural control measures such as temperature. Understand, the problem is not in getting oxygen to the blood, but in getting the blood to carry the oxygen to the organs. This is a complex issue…but we have the world’s resources as all countries are uniting in battle of this common foe. So to answer your specific question as to my thoughts, this is speculation on my part…but nature has a way of ensuring survival. I suspect that we’ll soon find an anomaly in this woman’s hemoglobin that will allow us to formulate a viable biocide.”
Another question from the crowd, “What kind of anomaly?”
“At this time it’s hard to be any more specific. But I think the evidence points to an anomaly at the genetic level. There are real world examples of this phenomena occurring naturally. Take the incidence of Sickle-Cell Anemia in our African American population. This is a genetic disorder that poses a severe health risk to those carrying the defective gene. But this same defective gene that represents a health risk today, at one time represented a primary benefit to people of certain geographical ancestry. Those with the defective gene were less susceptible to malaria, which as you know was a leading cause of death in those regions. The defective gene actually allowed specific branches of a people to survive and multiply. It is my current belief that a similar factor is at work here.”
“But didn’t you say that she survived her immediate family?”
“Yes, but genetics is a game of numbers. Her survival, if indeed resulting from a genetic disorder, could be tied to a recessive trait.”
“Have there been other survivors?”
“Some of the other countries are reporting―”
Chuck felt a heavy weight pressing against his chest as he turned to his wife. “They’re talking as if it has spread all over the world.”
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face against the side of his neck. “Tell me that we’re going to be okay.”
He squeezed her and put his lips to her ear. “We’ll be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” But he couldn’t muster much confidence in his words. Not while he was thinking about the semi-truck he saw driving down 62. He couldn’t imagine what those last two letters on the side of the truck stood for. But he had an awful feeling that it wasn’t good.
He pushed back from her. “I’ve got to get the rest of the stuff out of the truck.”
“Leave it, I want you here with me.”
He pulled from her clutch and stood. “I’ve got to or you can bet it won’t be there in the morning. It’ll just be a second.” He held her gaze until he thought she would be okay for a few seconds. Then he ran back to their bedroom closet and dumped the dirty clothes out of the plastic basket.
A moment later he was back in the house carting a basket full of baby food and candy. He set it down next to the chili, locked the door and rejoined his wife on the sofa. As they both leaned back, he asked, “Has the President been on at all?”
“A couple of times earlier, but you know he didn’t say anything meaningful. I wish they’d just keep the coverage on the doctors.”
“Yeah, me too,” Chuck huffed, as he settled back in the sofa to watch the coverage with his wife. There was a deep comfort in holding her—a feeling of warmth in his heart that he couldn’t ignore. As she rested her head on his shoulder, he let his guard down and asked, “Why haven’t you left me?”
There was no surprise in Becky. It was as if she felt the question coming. She started rubbing his chest and without lifting her head from his
shoulder, she said, “I asked myself that same question after our fight the other night. In fact I laid awake most of the night thinking about it. And the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that I was as much to blame as you for letting our marriage get away from us. There was really only one thing to decide.” She paused and patted his chest. “Give up on us, or fight for our marriage.”
Chuck rubbed her outside arm. “Did you decide?”
“I wasn’t sure until I woke you that morning.”
Chuck remembered her sitting on the coffee table and struggling with what she wanted to say.
“I was all ready to give up. But then you did something that surprised me.” She pulled her head off his shoulder and looked at him. “You told me that you were sorry. And when I looked into your eyes, I could tell that you meant it. That was enough to give me hope that we could save our marriage.”
Chuck looked at her as a warm sensation began to flow over his skin. A smile slowly spread across his face that was equaled by one on hers. “I want to fight for it too.”
Becky smiled as she closed her eyes and laid her head back on his shoulder.
~~~
The heat against his face forced him to back pedal onto the street as he watched the flames shoot up through the roof of their house. A sudden flinch sent his foot kicking against the bottom of the coffee table. He jerked awake, started to close his eyes again, then suddenly pulled his face out of his wife’s hair and shot his hand up to his cheek. His face wasn’t hot or scarred. A thankful sigh escaped. Their house hadn’t burned to the ground. It was just a dream. He was spooning his wife on the sofa. Right where they fell asleep watching the news.
He took a few, deep calming breaths before quietly easing his arm out from under Becky’s head. He got up, being careful not to wake her, and stretched as he glanced at the television. CNN was still carrying coverage of the events as they continued to unfold. He looked over at the light coming in through the drapes and glanced at his watch—8:17.
Ferryman Page 5